Aside from its use to purify drinking water the technique is widely applied for purification and separation of a variety of industrially and medicinally.
Ion exchange water softener diagram.
An ion exchange water softener exchanges the hardness minerals calcium and magnesium dissolved in water for sodium.
In zeolite softening water containing scale forming ions such as calcium and magnesium passes through a resin bed containing sac resin in the sodium form.
In the resin the hardness ions are exchanged with the sodium and the sodium diffuses into the bulk water solution.
As hard water passes through a softener the calcium and magnesium trade places with sodium ions figure 1.
The hardness ions ca and mg move into the resin beads and each of these divalent.
Ion exchange usually describes a processes of purification of aqueous solutions using solid polymeric ion exchange resin more precisely the term encompasses a large variety of processes where ions are exchanged between two electrolytes.
The ion exchange process is based on the fact that like charges repel one another and opposite charges attract.
In the ion exchange process sodium ions are used to coat an exchange medium in the softener.
Rohm and haas ion exchange ion exchange introduction 4 fd sep 2008 to soften water you take a cation exchange resin on which the mobile ion inside the beads is sodium na and you pass the hard water through a column filled with the sodium form resin.
This video uses animation techniques to show you how ion exchange works.
Sodium zeolite softening is the most widely applied use of ion exchange.
The exchange is made possible because the minerals are ionic in nature which means they have an electrical charge.